Our Experience Refusing the Tests

From City Newspaper (May 1, 2013)

Refusing the tests

Some of us coached our children to refuse six days of state exams last month. Some of us coached our kids to take the exams and understand that they are a meaningless measure. Some of our children who refused sat still for 90 minutes each of six days – nine hours total – not being allowed to read (in school!) and having extracurricular activities taken away.

Some of our children who refused were supported by their teachers. Others faced threats of detention and suspension. Others were marked absent despite being present in school. Many were lied to, saying their test performance would affect their grade.

More than 200 moms and dads from 16 area school districts have come together to share information about coaching our children to refuse New York State math and ELA tests. Why?

First, the test is a snapshot from which the kids' annual performance is measured – like a beauty contest being measured by the contestants' driver's license photograph. It's just not a good measure.

Another reason is concern over how the test scores are used. The New York State Education Department's plan is to use scores to measure building performance and teacher performance, yet the scores are not reported on the child's report card. Classroom teachers are not given the scores from the tests, so they cannot actually use them to help a child learn. Nine hours of test taking, plus the pre-test preparation and practice: Think of the worthy classroom learning crowded out by this waste of time. And we are merely halfway through the testing season. Still to come are the science and social studies tests.

Also of concern is what is being tested. The new Common Core curriculum was not in the hands of many teachers in September. Regardless of the quality of this curriculum, teachers did not have the material that the test covers. This is why administrators predict dismal scores this year. Parents have a concern about children being set up for failure.

Lastly, the tests are an intrusion on the classroom, not a part of the learning process. I understand that superintendents must require schools to implement these tests, because superintendents are pressured from the state. In turn, the state is pressured from the federal government to implement the Common Core, which requires these standardized tests. This is a cycle of bullying which has nothing to do with the classroom, nothing to do with teachers, nothing to do with children. Children are pawns.

The beautiful thing is that children have the power to stop this cycle. This is why my daughter, in eighth grade, refused to take these tests last year. She had no adverse effects on her report card or on placement for the next year. Refusing actually empowered her.

If you're interested in learning more to make an informed decision for your child during May's fourth and eighth grade science and social studies test and June's field testing, join the Greater Rochester Opt Out on Facebook.

(School districts in which children refused to take ELA and Math tests are Brighton, Brockport, Byron-Bergen, Fairport, Honeoye Falls-Lima, Marion, Newark, Penfield, Pittsford, Rochester, Rush Henrietta, Sodus, Spencerport, Victor, Wayland Cohocton, West Irondequoit, and Williamson.)

BETH LAIDLAW, ROCHESTER

Opting Out is Gaining Momentum

Do take pride in helping your child make a stand for quality education.

Do equip your child with a refusal letter and copies of information (see the tabs above).

Do remind your child not to touch the test.

Do keep it light -- most teachers will be supporting you.

Join over 200 other parents on Greater Rochester Opt Out here.


And a big Thank You to Rachel Barnhart (follow @rachbarnhart) for helping interested parents connect with one another!  And to Rochester IndyMedia who shows the whole story (Friday's press conference)!


Here is what is Good about Opting Out:

1. Opting out of testing is free! It costs nothing to opt out of testing.

2. When a student opts out of testing, she exerts a bit of control over her crazy world.

3. The student who opts out gives her teacher the opportunity to voice support of a classroom without high stakes testing.

4. When a student opts out of testing, he builds relationships between parents and teachers.

5. When a student opts out of testing, she finds common ground with her parents.

6. When a student opts out of testing, he begins a meaningful conversation with his teachers.

7. Opting out is a direct action aimed specifically at a practice that harms children.

Really Good Question: Does my child have to show up at school on testing day?

Answer: Yep.

My experience has been that when a child doesn't show up on test day, the child will be given the test on the previously arranged make-up day. In either case, emailing the teacher and principle ahead of time, sending the child in with the note and a fact sheet on test day (and a good book!) should be sufficient. The child may have to literally sit through the test, but should be able to read. My daughter was given a quite place to read when she opted out several times last year. I find keeping the tone of your communications to the school light is really helpful. J While the teachers and administrators cannot voice this, they are with you in spirit.

Why STEM Stinks

                “Why you gotta hate STEM?” a colleague asks, knowing it is rare for me to pan educational innovation. There is a difference between hating and discerning. One doesn’t need to hate a piece of cheese to discern that it stinks. So when I say STEM stinks, I mean that this nation-wide endeavor disregards the innate interests of individual learners and should not be promoted. At a societal level, it is bad for consumption.

                The White House’s December 2012 analysis found that federal agencies are making some 252 distinct investments in STEM education for a total budgetary commitment of $3.4 billion. Consider the scale of these numbers. And yet, STEM has not churned out the graduates it had hoped. Why? Because STEM ignores the two primary directives in education: 1) clearly discern where the student is and 2) clearly discern where you want the student to go.

                Finding the student (the first directive) compels us to locate the student intellectually and emotionally so that we are able to bring the student from where she is to where we’ve discerned we would like her to go (the learning outcomes of the second directive). This can be challenging. Finding where a student is often requires first providing a safe space. Growing up in an environment where a kid always needs to be on the alert creates crisis accommodations in brain chemistry that can mask one’s ability to comprehend. The perceived safety of schools is a necessary ingredient to learning and being able to express what one knows. So funding safe schools is our starting place in assessing a student’s capabilities.

                Finding a student intellectually requires discerning:

 A) What a student already knows,

B) How the student best learns, and

C) What a student’s interests are.

                A) Finding what a student knows should be done ideally one-on-one with an experienced educator rather than via the one-size-fits-all one-time snap-shot of standardized testing. The public school system has, in each of my three kid’s cases, seriously underestimated abilities leading to my having to intervene. As an example, my daughter’s kindergarten teacher had no idea, at our November conference, that she was an able reader. In another example, while state tests assessed my youngest as barely meeting grade level, the school psychologist, after spending over an hour with her, placed her in the honors curriculum where she now thrives.

                B) Discovering how a student best learns requires tools developed by educational specialists and administered with care (and definitely not delivered en masse). This job of assessment often requires experts who are able to diagnose learning difficulties. Rather than focusing our efforts on twenty percent of students (those 2’s that we want to make 3’s), understanding each child’s unique manner of learning serves the greater good.

                C) Discerning a student’s gifts and interests, what she is good at and what brings her joy, requires lots of listening and giving lots of choices in the classroom. For example, we can illustrate basic math and science lessons though deep sea diving or through cooking.

                With regard to the first directive, STEM stinks doubly. First, it hijacks resources and curricula in favor of children who are inclined toward math and science and against children who are not so inclined. Second, STEM hijacks resources and curricula in favor of engineering and technology careers and against the caring careers necessary to develop good educators. Our hope is that engineering and technology majors will lead to our being competitive globally and, hence, create innovative gizmos, the demands for which will create jobs to produce these gizmos.  Instead (or in addition), we need to fund education for counselors, teachers, therapists, and psychologists. I can only imagine what a beautiful world our children would grow to create if we would spend STEM dollars on truly educating. Instead we put the cart before the horse, and, even worse, it is the wrong cart.   

                The next post explores how STEM is misguided in discerning appropriate learning outcomes.

How To Opt Out: April-May 2013

For parents who are thinking about encouraging children to opt out of standardized testing this spring, here are five valuable posts:

1. What is great about opting out
2. Enlist the help of teachers in opting out
3. What your child should bring when opting out
4. Why my daughter chose not to take the state test.

And, most importantly,5. the specific lingo to use.

Dear Administrator,

Thank you for all that you do for our school. I am writing to respectfully inform you that my child, ______________, under my guardianship and advice, will be scored as a “refusal”, with a final score of “999” and a standard achieved code of 96, on all State testing including ELA, Math and Science as described in the NYS Student Information Repository System (SIRS) Manual on page 63. Please note that a “refusal” is not the same as “absent” as they are defined differently and scored with different standard achieved codes on page 63 of the SIRS Manual. Also note that on page 20 of the 2012 Edition School Administrator’s Manual it is explained that “The makeup dates are to be used for administering makeup tests to students who were ‘ABSENT’ during the designated administration dates.” My child will specifically be scored as a “refusal”, not “absent”, and therefore my child will continue to receive a free and appropriate public education in his/her regular classroom environment during the administration of all makeup test periods as this letter provides written verification of a “refusal” for all tests.

I would ask that the school please provide an alternative activity for my child during administrative sessions of testing (not makeup tests, as my child will be in his/her regular classroom environment). However, I understand that an alternative activity is not required on the part of the school. If you are unable to provide an alternative activity for my child I would ask that you please utilize the provision of the NYS Testing Program Educator Guide to the 2013 Common Core which, on page 9, explains “When Students Have Completed Their Tests….that student may be permitted to read silently.” I am reserving the option of removing my child from school during the test administration session depending on the emotional anxiety state of my child on the day of refusal and whether or not the school will provide an alternate activity for my child.

 Thank you very much. I look forward to a great end of the school year.

Sincerely,


Do let me know about your experience opting out!

Why SOTA Works-- it’s not about the art

First a Retraction: Last week’s post implied that Carrie Remis, director of Parent Power Project, is a paid lobbyist of charter schools. In fact, her organization is run mostly on donations.

February 26^th’s post garnered an unexpected number of hits,clearly an opportunity to broaden our conversation about education reform. In following up on Friday’s post, Carrie Remis graciously took time to explain why she is pushing for reform from outside RCSD (through the charter school structure). She has little faith in RCSD’s ability to bring about sustained improvement internally.

I believe strongly that the key to better educating the children of the City of Rochester is from inside. 

Here is why. 

  

SOTA works (90% graduation rate)  despite being an urban high school, despite drawing from a predominantly low income population, despite students who struggle to arrive at school ready to learn, because the entire focus of the curriculum is on the student as an individual learner.  Before a student arrives in seventh grade, the student has written to SOTA describing her reasons for wanting to attend and SOTA has designed a curriculum for her.

It is difficult to ferret out a winning approach to education reform. I find that one’s attitude toward high-stakes testing reveals whether you are approaching education reform from inside the district, focusing on the student by using the individual student’s interests (the carrot) to anchor learning

OR

whether you are approaching education reform from outside the district, focusing on the performance of teachers and school buildings through corporate-driven high stakes testing (the stick).

Some charter schools work, namely those whose primary focus is the individual student (Freedom Schools, Genesee Community Charter School). However, many charters schools are corporate entities focusing on profit making rather than student learning. So my criticism of Carrie Remis’ position is not a personal attack, but a criticism of her approach to educational reform and her support of high stakes testing.

Would it be prudent to support reform both from the inside and from outside? It is difficult to see how any reform which gleans the top-performing-most-motivated students (a school of the arts or a charter school) is true reform. I look toward a city school district in which each child’s interests dictates where he studies, whether that interest be art or carpentry or sports or science.

So, as blown away as I am with the drawing, painting, and sculpture at last night’s Senior Retrospective Art Exhibit and as impressed as I am with the sixteen AMAZING student-choreographed pieces in the Dance Concert 2013, SOTA’s graduation rate is not about the arts and it certainly is not about standardized test scores. Students thrive at SOTA because they learn about what interests them, guided by experienced teachers.

With the education of 32,000 children at stake, we need begin education reform thinking about the student not about a test score.

Be Careful of Charter Schools in Sheep's Clothing

I listened intently to Bob Smith's mid-day program on WXXI today. Local education advocate Carrie Remis threw blame for poor student performance squarely on the shoulders of teachers.

Intrigued, I researched her organization, ParentPowerProject, looking for evidence of her group's credibility.  What I found, upon following the money, is an organization that sprouted up just prior to the last RCSD board election whose agenda is to dismantle teacher unions so that charter schools can more effectively soak up public education dollars.

The list of ParentPowerProjects partners includes government-based charter lobbyists (Rochester School Lobbyist Association), tutoring companies (TutorOurChildren), a down-state charter school legal firm (Community Advocates for Educational Excellence), and the ill-fated local alliance that sponsored the billboards featuring children's mouths duct taped closed (Faith Community Alliance of Greater Rochester). Each organization above has its own economic interest in pursuing the charter school agenda. In researching these organizations, I could find no mention of the learning process or the needs of urban students.

Why bother to take the time to expose Remis and her organization? Because she pretends to speak for urban parents of RCSD children.

In the hour I listened to her, not once did she mention the futility of standardized tests or the necessity of helping children be school-ready each morning, let alone, how her organization might be able to help urban parents.

She is not a teacher, she does not have children in city schools, she is not a resident of the city of Rochester. She appears to be a charter school lobbyist and should be transparent about that. I tire of folks who are paid to speak for our children, yet do not have our children's best interest at heart. That makes my child a commodity.

ParentPowerProject's slogan is We grow savvy parents.

 Let us be savvy consumers of information and not give her access to free media. 

Thinking about Ending Gun Violence

I'm taking a break from Thinking about Momming in order to blog about reducing gun violence.

Just as soon as Washington passes sensible gun control measures, I'll be back to blogging about clear-headed parenting.

In the meantime, you can read my frequent posts at Working toward a Gun Free Society.